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They’d only been together with Blackwatch for a few months but working constantly in such claustrophobic quarters meant learning a lot about your partners fast.
For example, Jesse McCree learned that Genji Shimada, cyborg ninja assassin extraordinaire, liked watching creature features. Specifically, Godzilla movies. He caught him at his agent terminal a few times with something undoubtedly bootlegged pulled up on the screen, idly fiddling with a shuriken as he watched the special-effects laden destruction play out in front of him.
“You know, I’m not sure I get the appeal,” McCree noted as he shifted, pulling his arm up from under Genji’s shoulder to let the blood flow back into it some after being trapped for nearly two hours. Their bunks were hardly the most comfortable too so this movie marathon was going to make him all sorts of sore by the end of it. “You sure we can’t watch one in English?” he asked, eyeing the other as he pulled up the next in the series.
Large, cartoon-like Japanese characters flitted across the screen as the narrator rattled on in a language McCree could only barely catch a few words of; his only assistance was the tiny (poorly-done) subtitles scrolling across the bottom. “The English dub is bad,” Genji said simply, grabbing at McCree’s arm and situating it behind his head as he settled back to lean on his shoulder. “We’ve gone over this.”
They had. This was certainly not the first time they’d had movie night in one of their bunks. It had started out innocently enough; McCree had trouble sleeping, and it turned out Genji did too. Not surprising, given everything. Sometimes watching movies together until they couldn’t keep their eyes open any more was the only way to keep the nightmares at bay.
“Hmph. We’re watching John Wayne movies next time,” McCree said with a grunt, earning an amused snort. He let Genji settle against his shoulder, his slighter frame slotting in easily beside his bulk. It was cozy, in a weird sort of we’re-both-deadly kind of way.
And like always, Genji started to nod off mid-way through their third film – like clockwork, really. “What is it about these flicks?” McCree asked absently, feeling the ninja flag beside him. “They’re like Genji-nip, they get you all—woah there,” he said, startled as Genji slipped off his shoulder and landed awkwardly in his lap.
Well, that was something. McCree carefully shifted until the mostly-asleep ninja was at least lying almost flat, his eyes fluttering closed as they glanced off of McCree’s gaze as the only good night he could probably expect to get. God damn, Jesse McCree, he thought to himself, trying not to notice how handsome Genji was when his features weren’t twisted; and God, he looked so young.
Genji Shimada looked like a work in progress, with exposed tubing and half-finished armor trapping the scarred flesh that peeked out from the confines of the cybernetics keeping him alive. He looked fragile but thinking that was a mistake any man would be stupid to make – he’d be dead before he realized he was wrong, every time.
“Ain’t you something,” he murmured, unable to resist temptation. He lifted his hand up from where it was stuck again between their bodies, gently touching the other man’s face--
And nearly lost a finger for his efforts. Genji’s unnerving red-lit eyes flashed open and he lashed out with his teeth, catching McCree’s hand by the wrist with a snarl.
“Son of a bitch!” McCree shouted, yanking his hand away. “What are you, some kind of dog—“ he started to ask but stopped when he realized, that’s exactly what this was.
Why could he never let sleeping dogs lie? The look Genji was giving him indicated he was thinking the same exact thing.
“Excuse me,” Genji said in Japanese, one of the few phrases McCree knew. “You startled me.”
“Feeling’s mutual, pretty sure,” McCree muttered, rubbing at his abused wrist with a wince. “I think you owe me an answer to my question,” he said, thinking on his feet. “’Bout why you subject me to these movies. Then I won’t tell the boss you bit me,” he said with a smirk.
It was an empty threat but Genji huffed anyway, put out. “Then we’ll both be reprimanded for fraternizing within ranks,” he said with a healthy dose of snark, exaggerating Morrison’s delivery of the words from their orientation.
“I’m the one who’s gonna have the bruises to prove my story,” McCree added.
Another put-upon groan. It took a few long moments, a staring contest erupting between them until finally: “The language,” Genji said quietly, letting his eyes slip closed once again. “I miss it.”
That caught McCree off guard. He couldn’t imagine Genji… missing anything, not from where he came from. Not from the place that had spat him out half-dead and left him to become the mechanical monstrosity that he so hated being.
But he thought of the moments the boss would make an off-hand comment in Spanish, or curse using a phrase unique to that old part of Route 66 that smelled like burnt gasoline and desert sun year-round. The smell, the sights – they could all be brought back with just a few words and they made him feel … not good, but they made him feel something.
Genji had nothing like that. No one here knew a lick of Japanese. No one knew what the sakura blossoms looked like in spring or what incense spilling from old Shinto temples might smell like. He’d brought these things up before and McCree winced, remembering how he’d brushed them off as things he just couldn’t understand.
He was glad he’d given the Godzilla movies a chance, at least.
“Makes sense,” he said finally, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. “Reminds you of home.”
Genji snorted, but it was a half-made sound, barely escaping his throat. “Hardly,” he said, but that barely made it too.
Home was a complicated thing for them both. He sighed and let his arm rest on Genji’s chest; he wouldn’t mind sleeping here. He’d be sore in the morning either way. Home felt something like this, he figured; just not being alone. “Oyasumi, Genji,” McCree said, earning a half-asleep chuckle from the other, and that felt like home too.